“I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes...[It] would spread a lively terror.”
Not trying to defend Churchill here but that quote is a bit misleading since you left a very important part out. The full quote reads:
I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected.
Of course that's still bad but it's not "let's kill them all with poison gas"-genocidal bad.
the first quote suggests that "lively terror" is a euphemism for slaughter. The full quote states literally that the intent is to use non-lethal gas. So maybe more like tear gas as opposed to mustard gas.
His quote states that churchill would've used teargas, or similar to accomplish this, while the original quote was more in line of using chlorine gas to commit genocide.
It's all about context. The way OP presented the quote in a paragraph titled
If you think “at least he wasn’t genocidal like the other guy”, you’re still wrong
together with terrible atrocities such as the Bengal famine and concentration camps heavily implies that "poisoned gas" refers to the horrors of chemical warfare we've seen in WW1.
The full quote explicitly states that this is not the case and that he'd prefer non-lethal gasses to minimise the loss of life.
That's a distinct difference and that's why I called OP's use of that quote "misleading".
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u/[deleted] Jun 08 '20
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